What will become of them, those boys so full of enthusiasm and conviction? Are they fighting, or are they raging uselessly within prison walls, like me? I think back to all the happy times in my life. Just the happy times. The rest you have to forget, especially in here: you must forget, or else you get wrinkles. Wrinkles on your face are bad enough; in your heart they are even worse. Hour by hour, I relieve my unforgettable travels in the Soviet Union, my visits to Kiev, Moscow and Leningrad. I should like to tame some mice, but there aren’t any on our floor. It’s teeming with bugs, though. If it’s possible to train fleas for flea circuses, surely you must be able to tame bugs. I study flies at close quarters, admiring them as they clean their legs with such elegance. In normal circumstances we never have the time to appreciate the precise movements of a fly. In my mind I wander through the galleries in the Louvre. I try to piece together the image of some of the the paintings that I love best; but already there will be a corner, a detail, or even an entire figure that has become blurred, or even worse that has vanished entirely from memory. To tell the truth, even without books or work of any sort, it is still possible to fill one’s days.
Agnès Humbert, Résistance: Memoirs Of Occupied France
Agnès Humbert, Résistance: Memoirs Of Occupied France
